The Galaxy S6s and HTC One M9 are arriving within a month, so it’s going to be tough to justify buying any other phone for the time being. Motorola is going to try to convince you that the Moto X “Pure Edition” is still worth it (and maybe it is for all we know), though, with today’s deal that will land you a new Moto X “Pure Edition” and a pair of TRACKS AIR Sol Republic Bluetooth on-ear headphones for just $449.94.

If you break it down, Motorola is basically giving you a Moto X “Pure Edition” with 16GB of storage, customized with MotoMaker, for $450. That’s a $50 discount over the normal full price. They are then tossing in $200 Bluetooth on-ear headphones for free.

Now that we have passed the Galaxy S6 unveiling from Samsung, it is official that the Korea-based company opted to use in-house Exynos silicon to power its two newest flagship devices, instead of contracting out the job to San Diego-based Qualcomm for its Snapdragon 810 chipset.

What makes the situation important were the early reports that devices running the Snapdragon 810 were seeing overheating issues, with LG coming right out and denying the reports completely. However, whatever the case may be, Qualcomm lost its chance to power the newest Samsung devices, and now we are left with a new 64-bit octa-core Exynos processor inside both the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge. (more…)

For a couple more days, you can cruise into the DL Deals shop and grab the unlimited lifetime subscription promo we have been running for IDrive’s mobile backup solution. The deal gives you unlimited lifetime backup for contacts, photos, videos, calendar events, and more, on up to five devices. The service features 256-bit AES encryption along with an optional user defined key, so you shouldn’t be worried about the protection of your stored files.

IDrive works on Android devices running 2.2+, iOS 7.0+, and Windows Phone 8 or 8.1. It also has a web app.

Google gave us a big update to Google Contacts this afternoon, by introducing a “fresh look and feel” to an app inside of Gmail that has been painful to use over the years. The new web version of Google Contacts will now “conveniently” pool together contacts you talk to the most in Gmail, help you get rid of duplicates much easier, show recent conversations in contact cards, and even keep your contacts up-to-date automatically. (more…)

I can’t count the number of times over the last few weeks that random emails popped into our inbox telling us that our new commercials, especially the one with the animals, are amazing. After the Super Bowl, we heard a dozen times, “This should have been played during the game! It would have been the best commercial!” Of course, these Android “be together. not the same.” commercials are not ours, they are Google’s. But one thing is clear – people absolutely love ‘em.

In the most recent two, Google goes in two directions – one to show different people, young and old, coming together to enjoy life. The other, well, it’s all about that Androidify selfie dunk. Come on, tell me you haven’t wanted to selfie dunk? (more…)

Few would argue that the new Samsung phones, the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, are not massive upgrades over last year’s Galaxy S5. You could also argue that Samsung made almost all of the right moves with these phones in order to help them re-establish their dominance in the smartphone game after a terrible 2014. I say almost, because a number of our readers have made it clear that they are extremely disappointed to see three key features missing in this year’s flagship line-up – a microSD card slot, waterproofing, and a removable battery.

It’s more than likely that Samsung will defend these disappearances through talk of the 128GB option for storage hungry folk and the quick charging capabilities of each to fix battery worries. But what about the lack of waterproofing? And what about the bloated price we will surely see in the jump from 32GB to 64GB and 128GB. Or what about the person who doesn’t have the option to quick charge a phone, but could use a swappable battery in a pinch?

You tell us – are these missing features dealbreakers? If so, feel free to rank them by level of importance in the comments.

The Pebble Time (and its Steel brother) are now a part of the most funded Kickstarter campaign in history (for now). Shortly after announcing the new Pebble Time Steel, this morning, the smartwatch maker’s latest campaign jumped passed the Coolest Cooler, the previous record holder at just over $13 million. (more…)

As it turns out, Google did indeed drop the requirement for full-disk encryption on new devices running Android 5.0 “Lollipop” because of “performance issues.” In a statement issued to Engadget, Google confirmed that a change was made to their final Lollipop hardware requirements document, going with “recommended” instead of “must” for new devices. (more…)

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